When it comes to the adoption of data analytics by Canadian businesses has to play in business strategy, consider these two data points:

97 per cent said they had “some sort of strategy in place.”

Only 17 per cent of those say that analytics strategy is “well established and central to overall business strategy.”

So while many businesses are recognizing the need for an analytics strategy, most haven’t followed through on executing one. According to a worldwide survey of executives, Canada’s actually falling behind their global peers on this front.

EY and Forbes Insights conducted a survey of 1,518 global executives at large enterprises, including 1101 Canadian executives. Canadians faltered in other ways too, such as not being able to apply analytics to the earliest stages of the business development process and also struggling to even measure the results of these advanced analytics programs. (Would that be analytics for a data analytics strategy?)

Study author Alex Mohelsky says this is a problem.

“Canadian leaders must do more to close the gap and use advanced analytics insights in order to make the evidence-based case for change and fully capitalize on the strategic benefits of data-driven business initiatives,” he writes.

EY Canada has been a champion of analytics strategy lately, partnering with the SAS Institute in March. The alliance will see EY bring the same program its built out with SAS south of the border to its Canadian clients. That involves applying SAS analytics platform to business areas including risk analysis, capital management, financial crime and fraud prevention, tax reporting, healthcare analytics, and more.

Why does it matter? Well, according to EY’s survey, an advanced analytics strategy does more than just measure your business – it helps improve it. One-third said their analytics strategy prompted a change to their business strategy. Considering that these analytics leaders were more likely to see better revenue growth and higher margin, you can bet those changes were for the better.